At the stubborn insistence
of that agency’s director recreational
anglers can send in their lousy $65 and
kill off and carry breeding-age females at
the rate of 30 per day.
Director Diodati at least gets an “A” for
honesty. Unlike the recremercial fishermen
he caters to, he doesn’t pretend the season
is legitimate. “The commercial [striper]
fishery,” he writes, “has also changed by
attracting thousands of non-traditional
participants who are lured by the thought
of subsidizing an expensive hobby.”
In 2008, Massachusetts recremercial
fishermen reported landing 1,157,814
pounds of striped bass, 104.5 percent of
their quota. Of the 3,599 who purchased
permits only 1,207 reported landing even
one fish.
“You know that’s BS,” declares Brad
Burns of Stripers Forever. “Those other
2,392 guys didn’t buy their permits just
to look at them. All they have to do
is fork over that money, and they can
legally transport up to 30 big striped
bass at a time. Instead of requiring tags
Massachusetts uses the
honor system. It escapes
any reasonable thinking
to imagine that there isn’t
terrible abuse. On top of
not wanting to report
their catch and hitting their quota they
want to avoid income taxes. Only 102
[recremercials] reported catching at least
3,000 pounds of stripers which, at $3 a
pound, is $9,000 in gross income.”
Massachusetts Rep. Matt Patrick
(D-Falmouth) has recently introduced HD
245, a bill that would ban “commercial
harvesting and sale of wild striped bass”
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
reduce the recreational bag limit from
two to one fish per day, and impose a
slot limit between 20 and 26 inches or
over 40 inches. (While a locked slot limit
can severely damage weak year classes,
Patrick tells me he’ll talk to managers and
keep an open mind about making necessary
amendments.)
This desperately needed bill has the recremercials
shrieking like Sabine virgins.
“We are deeply concerned about what
we consider to be the privatization of our
rights of access to the resources we all
own and the current trend towards private
ownership of our fisheries,” proclaims the
Cape and Islands Inshore Fishermen’s
Association under the apt site logo of
a striper inside a red circle and crossed
out by a red line. “This bill will do little
more than place 100 percent of the access
to striped bass in Massachusetts into the
hands of an elitist group.”
The association goes on to bemoan possible
loss of the public’s “right” to walk
into any fish market and purchase wild
stripers, this despite the fact that farmraised,
white-bass-striper hybrids are
readily available for about the same price
(an indication that there is little difference
in flavor), are available all year instead of
The Massachusetts
commercial striper season
is a grotesque charade...
just summer and contain few of the PCBs
that have led to health advisories from
Maine to North Carolina for consumption
of wild stripers. Men and boys aren’t
supposed to eat wild striped bass more
than once a month; and young girls and
women who are pregnant or may get that
way should consider never eating them.